Heli's misfortune begins when her mother, the landlady, marries for the second time. The man is bossy and brutal. In an argument between stepfather and brother, Heli intervenes: She throws a hatchet, the stepfather falls and is killed.

Warsaw 1831: The young music student Frédéric Chopin falls in love with the singer Constantia. When his professor learns that Polish revolutionaries want to persuade Chopin to take part in their uprising, he and Constantia hatch a plan to keep Chopin away from the revolution: Constantia pretends that she no longer loves him, so that Chopin accepts an offer to go to a concert in Paris. There, however, he meets the famous writer George Sand and falls in love with her.

Dr. Egil Börne, an eminent physician, comes under the spell of an unscrupulous cabaret dancer and deserts his fiancée. The plot finds echoes throughout the Weimar period, including Sternberg’s The Blue Angel. Conrad Veidt appears in a supporting role as a sinister blind painter, whose entrance eerily presages Murnau’s Nosferatu. Der Gang in die Nacht, the earliest surviving film by F. W. Murnau, is also, paradoxically, the only Murnau film for which the original camera negative exists.